Letter delivered by hand to Cherie Blair at the Cypriot Community of north London on 1 February 2006.
1 February 2006

Dear Mrs Blair

I would like to welcome you to the Cypriot Community of north London and hope that your meeting with the Cypriot women is productive.

However, we are greatly disturbed by your decision to take up the defence of Mr and Mrs Oram who as you no doubt know have acquired illegal possession of the home of Mr Apostolides in the occupied north of Cyprus.

We respect that as a lawyer you have the freedom and right to decide which cases you choose to take on. But as a prominent human rights lawyer and as the wife of the Prime Minister, we are greatly disappointed, to say the least, that you have completely ignored the sensitivities and human rights of over two hundred thousand refugees, many of them living in the UK, who have suffered immensely as a result of the illegal invasion and occupation of the northern 37 per cent of the Republic of Cyprus.

The atrocities committed by the Turkish invaders are well documented, but I am attaching for your perusal a Sunday Times article on the findings of the Commission of Europe, which should be self explanatory. And as you are addressing the Cypriot Women’s association today, perhaps you should be aware that over 1,000 women and young girls were brutally raped by the Turks during the 1974 invasion. Many women became pregnant and such was the severity of the problem that the government of the Republic of Cyprus had to change the local laws to legalise abortion.

Mr and Mrs Oram and thousands of British citizens like them, are exploiting the situation engaging into illegal purchases of the homes and properties of the evicted refugees at give away prices, despite the advice of the Foreign Office ‘not to buy properties whose pre-1974 title-deeds belong to Greek Cypriot refugees’. As a human rights lawyer I am also sure that you are aware of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Loizidou versus Turkey case, that found Turkey guilty of preventing Mrs Loizidou returning to her home in occupied Kyrenia, awarded her costs and pecuniary damages and declared any title-deeds issued and transactions undertaken by the illegal regime in the north, as illegal under international law.

We therefore question your decision to defend the thieves of our homes and urge you to drop this case. Do not allow yourself to be caught up in a political game being played by the Turkish occupiers and the illegal property developers, who are putting up the money for your salary for their own interests, as stipulated by the recent Mail on Sunday newspaper article.